HP 4550- transfer kit replacement 1

[nicksims]

For a while the transfer kit "remaining life" has slowly dropped from 60 down to 40%. There has been a fairly stable drop in the number over the past months. Then the other day, the supplies status page told me that the remaining life on the kit is at 4%. I'm getting the Order the Kit warning on the screen.

In these few months, I've printed approximately 700-800 prints. I didn't think that this amount would be enough to drop the kit's life from 40% to 4%.

Any thoughts on why such a drastic drop in what I believed to be a short range of prints?

Thanks.
Nick

 

[TCouch]

Ok, here is the misleading information on HP's Transger Kit & Drum Kit, for those interested in knowing. The Transfer kit has a Page Life of 100,000. Now, although this is it's true life, you will find that you're not getting 100,000 pages from it, before you need to replace. Here's why.

This 100,000 Pages number is on single pass printing. In other words, ONLY Black Pages. If you print anything using color, you are making 4 passes. (1 for Black, and 1 for each color.) Now, if ALL the pages you print are in color, this means your transfer kit has a Color Page life of only 25,000 pages. Now, these numbers are also based on letter size paper. If you print legal, or anything lager than letter, you can again, expect this page life to be smaller.

The Drum kit follow these same principles, but with a 25,000 black life/6,250 color life. The fuser is a little differnet, in that you get 100,000 page life in simplex, or 50,000 page lifer if you print duplex.

As for why yours dropped from 40% to 4% in such a short time, I cannot venture a guess. Perhaps the printer had more pages printed on it that you thought. Lets use your numbers.

You said that you were at 40% life. This is about 40,000 pages. If you printed 700 documents, and ALL were in color, this counts as 2,800 pages if they were simplex. If yhey were duplex, this would be 5,600 pages. Using these, I would expect to see a drop from 40% to around 33%

One thing did catch my eyes with these numbers. Assuming you printed all 700 pages in Duplex mode, giving you 5,600 pages clicks on your consumables. Being that your Image drum is only 6,250 page life when printing color. 6,250 minus 5,600 would leave you about 4% on the imaging drum. Is it possible that you're seeing the printer report the Drum as only 4% remaining?

Timothy N. Couch.
A1 Printech
Anchorage, AK

 

[nicksims]

Timothy,
So that explains a lot about the page count life. Thank You!

I'll double check those numbers and get back here.

Nick